The Sad Tail of Barry Bonds

It seems like a thousand years ago that Barry Lamar Bonds was a young superstar left fielder for the Pittsburgh Pirates. And as he endures endless days in a federal court room, I wonder if it seems even longer to the walking human cranium.

Bonds has become a tragic figure in modern sports although the seeds of this tragedy are entirely self cultivated. His once in a lifetime talent should have made him a hero in Pittsburgh and an icon in his sport. He should be a shoe in for Cooperstown and merit consideration as one of the greatest players of all time.

Instead, he’s remembered at best as the surly epitome of the entitled modern athlete; at worst as a steroid freak. That’s the untenable part for those of us who remember the young Barry Bonds in black and gold. Long before he ever heard of Victor Conte, long before he juiced his way to immorality, Barry Bonds of the Pittsburgh Pirates was perhaps the greatest baseball player we ever saw.

There is a reason that I attended so many Pirate games in the early 80s and I assure you it goes beyond the daily (and sometimes twice daily) invitations from my good friend the Kapper. Watching a young Bonds was like watching a young Mario Lemieux; any night he might do something you had never seen before. As hard as this is to imagine for an entire generation of Pittsburgh baseball fans, the Pirates in those days where a truly enjoyable team to watch.

I will take it a step further; the Pirates during the height of the Bonds era were arguably the best team in baseball, though sadly without a championship to prove it. They won three straight division titles and did it the right way; with pitching, defense, and great fundamentals. And when that was not quite enough; Bonds was there to change a game with his bat, glove, arm or legs.

Which makes sense because as much as we would like to believe otherwise, you can’t win championships with just hard work and fundamentals. You need that superstar who can lift a team on his back at key moments. If you doubt this, I suggest you investigate the team goal totals of the hard working Penguins’ since Crosby and Malkin were injured.

What that means was that Bonds was the ultimate key to the Pirates’ phenomenal regular season success. He was also every bit the key to their trio of consecutive post season failures. To this day I can not get my arms around the idea that a player so dominant during the regular season could morph in to Rafael Belliard in October.

Those grievous post season failures might have been Bonds’ ultimate legacy had he not discovered the cream and the clear a decade later. They would probably have excluded him from mention with the true immortals of the game; even though his talent and regular season performance was every bit as impressive. To some extent, Bonds saved his legacy by juicing up; not because of the video game-like 73 home runs he hit in 2001 but because of his dominant performance in that post season (before the Giants’ inevitable World Series choke).

Of course saving his legacy might not have been necessary if Bonds’ were not such a complete jerk. The next person who has a genuinely good word to say about Bonds in public will also be the first. Did you notice the amount of joy last season’s Giants took not just in wining their first World Series but also in winning it without the testosterone king?

(Editors note, my apologies…according to Barry he’s the flaxseed oil king).

With all due respect to any other universally disliked athlete in sports, Bonds is the only one for whom it can be said a signature career moment was the coach or manager dressing him down publically on the 6:00pm news. Jim Leyland was extremely popular in Pittsburgh before he screamed, “I’m the ‘gosh darn’ manager!” at Bonds. He became a virtual deity afterwards. It was probably the first time in his life that somebody had the nerve to knock Bonds down a peg.

I talk a lot in the blog about athletes building up collateral with the fans and media. Those who choose not too do so ultimately at their own peril. Such collateral may have zero net value when the team is winning and/or the player is performing at his best; but it’s platinum when things go sour.

The simple fact is that when everybody hates you; people will bail on you at the first opportunity. Deep down, nobody wants to root for a guy they truly dislike. That’s why the Cubs continue to deny the existence of Sammy Sosa, a man who was instrumental filling their stadium for over a decade. That’s why Bear fans turned on Jay Cutler in a heartbeat last January.

It’s also why so many in the media continued to defend Kobe Bryant during his rape accusation while Ben Roethlisberger was given little or not benefit of the doubt. Kobe made a point to seem publically likeable, Ben never considered this a priority until last fall.

Barry Bonds never learned this lesson. Truth be told, I don’t think he ever cared too. He always seemed content to be a complete jerk, and anybody who dared call him out was either jealous or racist. Now its all coming back to bite him as many who knew him line up to jam the final nail in his legal coffin; with the media cheering them on.

Honestly, of all the things to hate about Bonds; his insistence on playing the race card is at the top of the list. I’m not suggesting that he never encountered racism in his life; at some point he probably did. I am saying that when a wealthy, entitled, superstar athlete uses it as a defense mechanism against even the slightest criticism, it insults and dishonors those who have truly been victims. It also speaks a great deal of that person’s character or better yet; lack thereof.

Is there any question that Bonds grew up with more money and privilege than most of us? Do you have any doubt that people have been kissing his rear end from the moment his monstrous athletic talents first became visible? Somehow, I don’t think Martin Luther King was visualizing the plight of Barry Bonds when he penned the “I have a dream” speech.

Which brings us to today. Perhaps the greatest baseball player of my generation is little more than a side show carnival freak. He’s on trial for lying to a grand jury and the U.S. Government is parading in a cavalcade of witnesses to prove it. In the end, they likely will. You know the old saying, if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck...

Bonds is too smart to believe that the drugs he was given were harmless creams and oils, especially when his body (and head) suddenly doubled in size and baseballs started flying in to San Francisco Bay with record breaking regularity. And if Bonds truly were that dumb, he’s too arrogant to make anybody believe it; especially given his personal trainer (and dealer’s) bizarre insistence on remaining in jail essentially at Barry’s behest.

No matter what happens in this trial, Bonds epitaph will be that he tarnished his entire legacy over what was likely 100 steroid induced home runs. That and one chance to overcome his litany of October failures. I exclude his home run records because they are afforded no legitimacy in modern baseball. In point of fact, Bonds’ most amazing feet may be that singlehandedly transformed two of the most revered records in all of sports in to complete irrelevancy.

Which means in the end, he did it all for nothing.

Oddly, in spite of everything I said above, I have mixed emotions on this. I find it impossible to have any sympathy for Bonds and certainly would love to see another blow landed in the fight against performance enhancing drugs in sports. And yet there is still a part of me that remembers him as a young man making those miraculous diving catches on the green cement of Three Rivers Stadium. That part of me mourns that a player of that magnitude will be remembered only as a cheater, a criminal, and a first class jerk.

Even for as vile a character as Bonds, that qualifies on some level as a sports tragedy.